


The Truth (And Nothing But)

by manic_intent



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, That Post-Canon AU where Quentin doesn't die, and Peter becomes a journalist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 12:57:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21054791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: “You’rethe source?”Quentin looked up sharply from his phone. A young man sat down at his table, a black cap with an XR symbol shading his eyes. He wore a plain grey shirt bisected by a leather strap that slung a satchel at his hip. The stranger had a soft-jawed face cut with gentle lines, short brown hair, and dark hazel eyes that narrowed in disbelief. There was something familiar about him. There—“What the fuck.” Quentin jerked to his feet as the pieces slotted together. “Peter?”





	The Truth (And Nothing But)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I confess I’ve never liked Peter Parker as a character, partly because of his monologues, partly because of the lolsy approach to journalism ethics that he and other superhero journalist characters tend to have. Nor did I like the Blip. I did love Jake as Mysterio though, so. YMMV.

“_You’re_ the source?” 

Quentin looked up sharply from his phone. A young man sat down at his table, a black cap with an XR symbol shading his eyes. He wore a plain grey shirt bisected by a leather strap that slung a satchel at his hip. The stranger had a soft-jawed face cut with gentle lines, short brown hair, and dark hazel eyes that narrowed in disbelief. There was something familiar about him. There—

“What the fuck.” Quentin jerked to his feet as the pieces slotted together. “_Peter?_”

“Sit down, Mister Beck,” Peter said. The clipped edge to his voice unsettled Quentin enough that he sat back down. The enthusiastic, peppy kid Quentin had once met who’d been more interested in confessing to a girl than saving the world had turned out to have a core of flint deep down, past all the puppy mannerisms. Time had whittled Peter down, brought the steel in him closer to the surface. 

Time and a hell of a lot of blood under the bridge. Quentin smiled tightly. “What a pleasure to see you again,” he said. 

“Pleasure’s yours, if any.” Peter slumped in his chair, folding his arms as he looked Quentin over. “When did you get out of jail?” 

“A year back.” 

“That soon?” 

Quentin clenched his hands into fists under the table, digging them into his knees. “What can I say? I’m out on good behaviour. Turned over a new leaf, got all rehabilitated, the works.” He winked. Peter scowled, but swallowed whatever he was about to say when one of the staff walked over to take their order. 

Coffees duly ordered, Peter said, “This is a waste of time.” 

Stung, Quentin said, “Look, kid, I didn’t know you were gonna be here, I was just told to meet someone. Are you seriously working for Publicar as a reporter? You’re ‘Peter Hogan’?”

“And you’re ‘Blake’.” Peter exhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That’s two months’ worth of work down the drain.” 

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what new sort of scheme you’re up to now, but give it up. Do you want to go back to jail? You’re a smart guy. Go into tech or crypto or something.” 

That hurt, and it surprised Quentin that it hurt. 

After the flaming mess circumstances and—fine—his own poor life decisions had made of the first three decades of his life, Quentin thought himself now immune to opinion. Jail had been eye-opening. Taking a plea deal had bumped down his sentence, and the system had somehow assessed Quentin as low-risk despite him having conspired to murder various people, including kids and Spider-Man. He’d suspected SHIELD having a hand in that. If he’d felt the need to appeal, to go through a trial, well. Quentin did know too much, in the B-grade movie sense. Not just about how SHIELD worked, but about how Tony Stark had mysteriously gifted an adolescent with a global murderdrone system. 

When he’d been coughed out of prison, Quentin had vowed to put all that behind him, or at least to stay out of trouble. That hadn’t lasted long. Quentin could appreciate the irony, though. Now that he was finally trying to peddle the truth, the past had come back to bite his ass in a big way. 

“You’re upset.” Peter leaned forward, peering at Quentin closely.

Time—or journalism training—had made Peter more perceptive. Quentin faked a smirk. “I don’t know, kid. The last time we met, I was kinda bleeding out from multiple gunshot wounds.” 

Peter winced. “That was an accident. And you survived. Long enough to ruin my life.” 

“That was mutual. Besides, we’re both still here,” Quentin said. He wasn’t sorry about that, not even now. He’d thought himself on the verge of death, and vengeance had been the sweetest thing about blacking out from the pain. 

“Yeah. We are.” Peter looked up just as the staff brought over their coffee orders. He drank a sip, glancing over at the other tables. Peter blended right in at this cafe, which was full of young, peppy, pretty people, fashionably casual. 

Quentin drank his coffee, thinking. He’d been anxious about this meeting all morning before psyching himself to go, and now that he was here he’d lost all stomach for it. Peter said, “Why are you here?” 

“Doesn’t look like you’re going to believe me, so why bother asking?” 

Peter exhaled. “Look. I’m going to have to—whatever happens, I’m going to have to recuse myself from this story because of our shared history, so. Call it professional curiosity. You owe me.” 

“I do, huh?” 

“It wasn’t fun having my face plastered over the news, or being hounded by every conservative tabloid looking for a scoop. Or having to drop out of school, move away from all my friends, change my name. My aunt got fired. We lost our apartment…” Peter trailed off. “All that wasn’t even the worst of it. Do you want to know what was? I really did trust you, _Mister_ Beck.”

Ouch. “That was then.” 

“I doubt you’ve changed. Though. All these months we spent talking on Telegram… your info looked legit. I’ve had other sources corroborate some of your points. You sounded like you cared enough to be a whistleblower.” 

“Big, international company getting rich while screwing their bottom line? Sure. Why wouldn’t I care? Like I told you, people have already died. Someone just this week. Another car accident over in Queens.” Quentin tapped his fingertips against his still-warm cup of coffee. “Other sources, huh? Didn’t realise there were other people out there who’d be in the know. I had to dig pretty deep even with my employee access.” 

“The truth doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” Peter said. 

Quentin chuckled. “Is that Publicar’s motto or something? Your sources must’ve come good, or you wouldn’t be here. The dirt I’ve got _is_ legit. Does it matter at that point whether you think I care?” 

The kid Quentin had first met in a SHIELD safehouse hadn’t a shred of cynicism in him, bright-eyed and breathless and convinced that the world existed to be kind to everyone. Quentin didn’t regret breaking that innocence out of Peter. If it hadn’t been him, it’d have been something else. Still, as Peter stared at Quentin with a weary cast to his pretty face, it unsettled Quentin all over again. The world felt out of joint, even though all it’d done was make Peter grow up early. 

“I’ll get my editor to assign you someone else,” Peter said, after a long pause. “They’ll be in touch.” 

“Right.” Quentin drained his coffee and dropped a bill on the table as he got to his feet. Peter straightened up, as though about to stop him, but sat back down against his chair. His hard-eyed stare followed Quentin out. 

Quentin took his time getting home. Saturdays were usually quiet days for him anyway. He ate a sandwich in a park, caught a film, browsed one of the few remaining bookstores in his neighbourhood. By the time he got home with a bag of groceries, the sun was fading through the jagged teeth of the worn apartment blocks in his neighbourhood. Quentin cooked. Ate. Only when it was dark out did he close himself in his study and palm the small recording device from his pockets. He loaded it into his PC and flicked through the audio. 

“The truth doesn’t exist in a vacuum.” Peter’s voice was crystal-clear from the speakers.

Quentin paused the recording and steepled his fingertips before his grin. “Always got to be the smartest in the room, kid,” he told the silence.

#

‘Peter Hogan’ was an up-and-coming journalist, according to his Publicar profile. Studied journalism at Stanford. First freelance articles published at smaller local newspapers, all of them public interest or political. Finally got a break working full-time for Al Jazeera English, assigned to the Sudanese Bureau, of all places. Moved around a few Bureaus before eventually returning to New York to take up an investigative reporter position in Publicar. No clear public photos anywhere.

And nothing about Spider-Man. There was the occasional local news article now and then about a spider-esque superhero, but from the footage Quentin found, it didn’t look like Peter. The Manhattan Spider was slighter and wore a jet black costume with a red logo. The LA Spider was too short and was probably a woman. Just in case, Quentin started sieving for more footage of the Manhattan Spider with a program he’d coded. He got up to make himself a new cup of coffee—only to freeze with a yelp. Braced high on the wall behind his desk was a familiar lean figure in a grey hoodie.

“_Christ_.” Quentin clutched at his chest. “Are you trying to kill me or what?” 

Peter pushed himself off the wall, landing silently on his feet. “What are you doing?” Peter asked.

“I should be asking you that question. This is my home. The fuck are you doing, re-enacting the Exorcist? I nearly had a heart attack.” Quentin edged back against his desk. He didn’t have anything in his study that could be used as a weapon in a pinch, and Peter was too close to the door.

“Why didn’t you respond to Ed?” Peter asked, folding his arms over his chest. 

“Who?”

“Edmund Lee. The Publicar reporter who took over. He said he contacted you through Telegram.” 

“Oh, that. Guess I got cold feet. It happens. What with, y’know, realising the past wasn’t all as buried as I thought it was,” Quentin said. 

“You’re sweating. And your heart’s going a mile a minute,” Peter said, his voice dropping low. “Ed got in touch with Amalon. They said you resigned.” 

“Things got a little too hot for me.” 

“Got a real generous golden handshake too,” Peter said. Quentin was sure that his face didn’t betray anything, but Peter shook his head. “You’re not the only one good with computers. Funny how a UX engineer could resign with a 10 million dollar bonus, hm? While the leads I’d cultivated all suddenly dried up.” 

“Bad luck, kid,” Quentin said. And because he could never resist baiting anything, he smirked. “What are you gonna do, call the cops? You’re the one trespassing.” 

“I’m not the same naive kid from before. Do you think I can’t figure out what you did? What were you wearing, a wire? You just wanted to get an interested journalist on record, didn’t you? I gave you the ammunition to extort some money from your employer. You used me. Again.” 

Was _Peter_ wearing a wire? “Funny story,” Quentin said, still smirking. “Maybe you should’ve been a novelist instead of a journalist. Or an engineer. Wasn’t that where you were gonna do? What with worshipping Tony Stark and all—”

“_Don’t_ say his name,” Peter snapped.

“Oh, did that touch a nerve? C’mon, kid. You’re not meant to be naive anymore. How many people died after the Blip just because your favourite mentor decided to be selfish and make sure his little girl lived, huh? How many people fell from the air out of planes that were no longer there just because he wanted to put everything right back where it was? How many people died because surgeons only reappeared years later?” Quentin bared his teeth, advancing on Peter as he flinched. 

“You think all those people I managed to marshal behind me fell in line because they were disgruntled employees?” Quentin said, sneering. “Sure, some of them were fired or retrenched from Stark Industries. But some quit. And all of them knew somebody who died because of what Stark did.”

“That doesn’t make what you did right,” Peter muttered, clenching his fists. 

“What’s ‘right’ nowadays, hm?” Quentin asked mockingly. “Did I kill anyone? Granted, it wasn’t for lack of trying, but Tony Stark, on the other hand—”

“Don’t say his name!” 

“—oh, he killed people. Lots of people. He’s so smart, he would’ve known exactly what the consequences would’ve been, and he chose to do it anyway. Is there even an official death count out there yet? It’s been years since the Blip, and the world economy’s never quite recovered. Hell, climate change even accelerated. Maybe you should look into all that, Mister Journalist.” 

“Don’t,” Peter whispered, backing off and shaking. “Don’t.” 

“There was this funny thing I heard in SHIELD, back when Fury thought I was legit,” Quentin purred, advancing another step. “Stark didn’t just do all that for his little girl. He was originally planning on leaving things as they were, Snap and all. He only went through all that business of undoing the Snap because of you.” 

“_Don’t!_” 

“Is that why you stopped the superhero schtick to be a war correspondent at your age? Truth is such a complicated thing, isn’t it? Stark’s still a hero to his adoring public. The man was handsome, rich, white. People like him have been getting away with murder for a very, very long time. But you and I know better.” Quentin shoved Peter up against the wall with a palm clenched over his shoulder. “Don’t we, kid?”

“You’re wrong!” Peter pushed Quentin, hard enough that Quentin stumbled back and hit the edge of his desk. Quentin cried out—something cracked—and Peter fled, darting out through the door. By the time Quentin got to his feet and staggered out into the living room, Peter was gone. 

Shit. Quentin had won this round, but victory didn’t feel as good as it should’ve.

#

Quentin invested the money and bided his time. He bought a modest house and converted its garage into a lab. It was nothing like what he’d been used to in Stark Industries, or even in the warehouse that he and the other ex-SI people had fitted out together with stolen tech and jury-rigged machinery. The tiers of workbenches, tools, and the new souped-up computer in the corner still made him feel good.

Quentin was putting the freshly assembled 3D printer through its first paces when Peter said, “Another drone?” 

“Fuck! This is getting old,” Quentin groaned, righting himself. He’d fallen off the chair in shock. Peter didn’t even glance over—he was peering at the screen. “What do you want now, Parker? Or Hogan, or whatever you’re calling yourself now?” 

“‘Peter’ is fine,” Peter said. No hoodie this time. Peter was back in a simple shirt and jeans and the satchel at his hip. “Thought I’d check in.” 

“Normal people would knock,” Quentin said. 

“We’re both not normal.”

“You have a point there,” Quentin conceded. “What do you want?” 

“Just…” Peter exhaled. He sat down on Quentin’s computer chair, rubbing a hand over his face. Peter looked grey and worn down—there were deep smudges under his eyes, a hunch to his shoulders. “I wanted to talk.” 

“Is this going to take very long?” 

“Maybe.” 

Quentin exhaled. “Sit there. Beer?”

“Fine.”

Quentin took two beers out from the bar fridge in the corner of the lab and tossed one over to Peter. He sat on the workbench beside the busy printer, opening his can and taking a drink. “Okay. Go,” he said. 

Strangely, Peter didn’t start off with the word-vomit Quentin had gotten used to when he’d been a kid. “Now I don’t know where to start,” Peter said. 

“You could start with why you’re now stalking me,” Quentin suggested. 

“You’re dangerous.”

Quentin laughed, startled. “Kid, you’re far more dangerous than I could ever be. Sure, I’m good at tech. _You_ have superpowers. Powers aside, I suspect you’re better at what I could do, even. I read your SHIELD file. Hell, if you hadn’t become a journalist… if you’d just signed right up into Star—”

“They asked,” Peter cut in. “I said no. I wanted to see the world. Experience things that I couldn’t see or understand if I’d just worked in a lab all day. Or stayed a ‘friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man’.”

“Usually, people don’t try and ‘find themselves’ in a war zone.” Quentin tipped his beer at Peter. Peter’s lip twitched. He opened his beer and took a sip, making a face as he did so. “Don’t tell me you can’t hold your liquor,” Quentin said. 

“I have a small healing factor. It takes a lot of liquor to affect me.” Peter set the beer down. “I’m just not fond of the taste of beer.” 

“Too bad. Beer’s all I’ve got here. Coffee’s in the kitchen.” It felt oddly comfortable shooting the breeze with Peter like this. Even now, this older, sober version of Peter had an easy way about him that was so damnably interesting. Quentin had liked Peter when they’d first met. That hadn’t changed, even after he’d tried to kill the kid. 

It took half a can of beer before Peter finally unstuck himself from whatever inner conflict he was hung up on to say, “You’re a sociopath.” 

“High-functioning sociopath,” Quentin corrected. 

“I don’t even know why I’m talking to you,” Peter said. He gestured at the printer. “You’re probably up to no good already.” 

“You come into my home, drink my beer, and reward me by insulting me,” Quentin said, pretending to wipe away a tear. “You hurt my feelings, kid.”

“What are you up to, then?”

“Honestly? Just tinkering. It’s fun. Soothing, too.”

“It isn’t some half-assed plan to break into a bank or something?” A faint, wan smile tugged at Peter’s mouth. 

“Kid, if I wanted to make money, there are easier ways to do that than breaking into a bank. Who still physically breaks into banks anyway? That shit’s for movies and video games.” If Quentin wanted to stage a bank heist, he’d start with hacking the SWIFT network. He could skim millions before anyone noticed. 

“What do you want, then?” Peter asked. “I never quite got that: the drones, the Mysterio thing. I didn’t understand. You couldn’t have kept up that charade forever. Once there was a real threat of some sort.” 

“World domination?” Quentin said facetiously.

“That stuff only happens in the plot of bad movies,” Peter said. 

“Hey, don’t diss films. Eh.” Quentin scratched at his chin. “I guess I wanted the world to move in a direction very quickly, and to do that I needed to make a splash. For what it’s worth, I didn’t want to kill you.” Not at the start, anyway.

“Move where?” 

“Accelerating climate change, hello?” 

“You care about that?”

“Well, why not?” Quentin asked, puzzled. “I have to live on this planet too. It’s not going to be fun for me when the ice melts and there are global wars over water, food shortages, and all that. Besides, I might not like people, but I like animals, and they’re disappearing real quick.” 

“So you’d have, what. Taken over SHIELD and. Then?”

“The world was still in disarray at that point, post-Blip. Easier to move around. It’s a moot point now. Everything’s back to its usual head-in-the-sand denialism.” 

“And you’re back to tinkering with a 3D printer in a garage,” Peter said. 

“While you’re sitting in my chair bitching at me while I tinker with a printer in a garage,” Quentin shot back. 

“I could help,” Peter said, then froze up and looked surprised at himself. 

“Why would you do that?” 

Peter stared at the computer screen, reading the command prompt window with its lines of code, then looking back over at the printer. “It’s been a while,” Peter said softly.

“Since what?”

“Since I’ve worked in a lab. Tinkering with stuff just for the hell of it.” Wistfulness crossed Peter’s face fleetingly. 

“Feel free to poke around if you want,” Quentin said, as the 3D printer finished its work with a low hum. “Just don’t break any of my shit.” 

Peter blinked. “You’d… why?” 

“Guess I know the feeling,” Quentin said. He was curious about what Peter might try to build. Quentin was reasonably talented, but Peter was a prodigy. Whatever he made was going to be interesting. Maybe even usable. “Besides, I’m not averse to having some eye-candy around.” He winked.

Peter blushed, jerking to his feet. “I’ll… on second thoughts, I’d better go.” He all but sprinted out 

In the silence of the room, Quentin laughed. Well, well.

#

Peter started dropping by, ostensibly whenever Quentin was around. Quentin was sure there’d been at least a couple of break-ins when he wasn’t. He understood. Fool me twice, and all that. It wasn't as though Peter would find anything remotely interesting. Quentin wasn’t stupid—he didn’t leave manifestos lying around, he'd locked everything digital under three-factor authentication. The stuff he built in his lab was just harmless shit he made to keep his hands busy.

“You could probably make money off this,” Peter said, holding up a transparent, paper-thin scroll of solar cells. Quentin had spent a couple of days plastering that over his windows and part of the roof. 

“I can make money off—”

“I know, you’ve said. Hacking banks or whatever. I meant, you could make _legitimate_ money off this. It’s awesome.” 

“Legitimate money,” Quentin said, chuckling. “Yeah, I’ve done that. Been there. Let’s say I do it. I make a tidy little profit selling transparent film solar cells to tech-savvy hipsters. What does that change? For anyone?” 

Not to mention running a ‘legitimate business’ felt like too much work to Quentin. He’d seen firsthand what went into running a tech business. Long hours, crunch times, sleeping on couches and under tables to meet deadlines. Only for projects to be thrown out or changed at the last minute to fit an accountant’s spreadsheet or placate some billionaire’s ego. That kind of life wasn’t for him any longer. Even if he got to be the boss. 

“No further jail terms sounds good,” Peter said. His mouth quirked up at the corners. 

“Funny. What about you, kid? That Spider-Man stuff’s long blown over. You’re way smart. You could do whatever you want. Why are you working a beat in a niche newspaper?” 

“I guess you showed me how the truth isn’t enough to move the needle. There’s got to be a story in it too. Watergate, Weinstein… journalism, at its best, can change the world.”

Quentin chuckled. “You’ve been in war zones, kid. You know that isn’t true. Besides, how many people even read the news nowadays?” 

“69% of Americans, at last count.” 

“That’s… Sort of better than I expected,” Quentin conceded. 

“Up until you consider what gets classified as ‘news’, then it kinda gets depressing… that aside. I think journalism’s more critical than ever. People standing up and speaking truth to power. That’s why I do it.”

“Even if 31% of the people in this country give absolutely zero shits about whatever you might dig up.” 

“Just because they don’t read it doesn’t mean they wouldn’t hear about it. Or be affected by its consequences.” 

“Doubt you’d do anything that big working where you are now. You could probably have scored a bigger gig by, I don’t know, staging a scoop with pics of yourself as Spider-Man that nobody else could get,” Quentin said. That would’ve been easy for Peter. Big news, too. Superheroes made for easy stories.

“That isn’t ethical. Though, at the start, it was maybe a little bit tempting,” Peter admitted. “When it was so tough getting any gig at all. No. I either do this right, or I don’t do it at all.”

“You’re either weirdly trusting, or you’re seriously lonely,” Quentin said as he looked up from the tangle of wires he was working on. 

Peter looked briefly hunted. “Why’d you say that?” 

“C’mon. We didn’t exactly part on good terms. Here you are, coming by, talking my ear off.” 

“Oh.” Peter’s ears reddened. “I could stop?” 

“I didn’t say that. I’m just curious.” 

“Originally, I was checking in on you, just in case. I still don’t trust you. But you aren’t interested in saying stuff I want to hear. Sure, you’re not saying it for my own good, either, but I think it’s still good to hear it. Something different.” 

Maybe the kid was a masochist. Or. “Sure it isn’t because I have a nice ass?” Quentin said playfully.

Instead of blushing and running off, Peter coughed and said, “Maybe.” 

Far be it for Quentin to turn down a challenge. “Aren’t you going to do something about that?” 

He’d thought Peter would try to change the subject, or back off, but this time Peter got slowly to his feet and closed in. Peter wasn’t as tall as Quentin was, but with Quentin seated, he had to look up at Peter. “You’re hard to read. I still can’t tell when you’re stringing me along. Whether you’re trying to use me,” Peter said.

“Kid, everyone uses each other. Sometimes they dress it up with pretty words.” Hoping that he wasn’t about to get his ribs cracked again, Quentin reached over and pressed his palm over the small of Peter’s back. Peter didn’t shift when he tugged, but he didn’t shove Quentin’s hand away either. 

“I can’t seem to make good decisions around you,” Peter said. He sounded rueful as he leaned in, tentative until Quentin planted a playful kiss on his nose. With a startled laugh, Peter curled his fingers around the back of Quentin’s neck and pulled him over for a proper kiss. The unyielding strength in Peter’s fingers felt weirdly exhilarating. Peter could squeeze down and crush Quentin’s spine if he wanted to, or snap his neck, and there’d be nothing Quentin could do. Quentin twisted his fingers into Peter’s shirt and moaned as Peter crowded closer, the chair beneath him creaking as Peter pressed him down, kissing until they were both hungry for air. 

“Good decisions are boring decisions. I don’t think you’re boring at all,” Quentin whispered, scraping each word against Peter’s parting lips. “Are you, Peter?” 

Peter whimpered. His fingers bumped awkwardly against Quentin’s belt, and he stiffened as Quentin caught his wrists. “Whoa, boy,” Quentin said, laughing. “Have you done this before?” 

“Well, yeah,” Peter muttered, red to his ears. 

“With a man?” 

“I did some stuff in uni and. Why do I have to tell you any of this?” Peter scowled. With kiss-reddened lips, it was kinda cute. 

“Because you want to.” Quentin tickled his fingers lightly over Peter’s throat. “You come to me because you want me to teach you a lesson. Things that you can’t learn from all the ‘good people’ in your life. Isn’t that right?” Quentin bit down over the meat of Peter’s throat, and Peter jerked in his grip with a hoarse cry. 

“Yes,” Peter choked out, his hands squeezing tightly enough over Quentin’s shoulders to bruise. “Yeah.” 

This was what Quentin was good at. The drones and illusions were just tools. When he was at his best, Quentin didn’t need more than his voice to make people do what he wanted, believe in what he wanted. He could reel Peter in now, kiss him tenderly, give him the direction and affirmation that Peter seemed to crave. 

“I know what you’re doing,” Peter murmured, his grip easing up as he stroked his palms down Quentin’s flanks, lingering over the spot where he’d accidentally cracked Quentin’s ribs. 

“Then why don’t you stop me?” Quentin asked, amused. He kissed Peter as Peter shivered, stroking Peter’s cheeks until the tension left him. Quentin walked them back from the groaning chair to the workbench, pulling Peter up and pushing away bits and bobs to clear a space. Peter hesitated as Quentin tugged at his shirt, but obligingly helped him get it off. He squirmed as Quentin whistled, looking down appreciatively over the lean muscle. “You sure you’re only a reporter, kid?” 

“That’s a spider bite thing,” Peter muttered, pulling at Quentin’s shirt. 

Quentin ignored the hint, unbuckling Peter’s belt. “A spider bite can give me washboard abs? Where do I sign up?” 

“Shut up.” Peter kicked off his shoes. “Like you need the help.” Quentin pretended to look confused, and Peter rolled his eyes, jabbing the ball of his foot into Quentin’s belly. “You’re still so hot,” Peter said, hushed. “The first time I saw you, I think I had to pick my jaw off the ground.”

“I noticed,” Quentin said. It’d been kinda adorable. “I was surprised, myself. That Spider-Man was such a cute kid.” He grinned as the flush mottled Peter’s throat and shoulders, catching Peter by the chin. “I still like what I see.” He hauled Peter to the edge of the workbench for a hungry, biting kiss. Peter whined, scratching down Quentin’s chest with blunt nails. Holding back his strength. 

Quentin grabbed Peter’s wrist, brushing a kiss over the palm. “Bruise me if you want,” Quentin said, grinning as Peter gasped. The pants and underwear followed Peter’s belt to the floor as Quentin kissed down Peter’s belly to the coarse hair peppering close to the apex of his thighs, to the musky scent that followed. Peter’s thickened cock bumped against Quentin’s cheek, and Quentin looked up at Peter with a lazy smile as he rubbed his bearded jaw against it. Peter’s hips jerked as he moaned, hands tightening over Quentin’s shoulders. He wailed as Quentin licked the tip, tensing up over the bench. 

It had been a while since Quentin had bothered with something like this. He was out of practice as he awkwardly took the swollen tip into his mouth and pressed his tongue against it, sucking. Peter keened. Fingers dug hard over the nape of Quentin’s neck as Peter’s thighs squeezed against Quentin’s ribs. Quentin let up with a hiss of pain, wincing as he pulled Peter’s legs up over his shoulders. 

“Sorry,” Peter gasped, gripping the edge of the workbench instead. 

“Don’t be.” Quentin pressed Peter down with an arm over his belly and spat on his free hand. He took Peter back into his mouth, as much as he could take before he started to choke, wrapping his palm around the rest and squeezing as Peter squeaked and bucked, nearly jerking Quentin right off him with his unnatural strength. 

That was hot. Quentin shifted into a slow, sloppy rhythm, teasing Peter instead of trying to get him off. Peter lay on the workbench, moaning urgently and twitching against Quentin but not daring to do more. He let out a disbelieving gasp as Quentin pulled off with a wet sound to stripe slow licks over his balls, squirming until he finally moaned, “Quentin.” 

“Hmm?” 

“C’mon,” Peter said, pulling at Quentin’s shoulders. “More.”

“Someone’s in a hurry.” 

“_Please_,” Peter panted, wild-eyed. “Please.” 

Peter Parker, begging. Quentin was going to remember this moment forever. The first of many, if he dealt his cards right. “Since you asked so nicely,” Quentin said, planting a kiss against Peter’s thigh. Peter cried out as Quentin swallowed him down and sucked, humming loudly as he bobbed up and down. “God, oh God,” Peter whispered, nails scraping against Quentin’s throat. He thrust clumsily against Quentin’s mouth, and Quentin let it choke him, his throat clenching up. “Sorry… Mister Beck, I—” Peter jerked again, thighs straining as Quentin swallowed hard around him. Peter wailed as his hips pumped into Quentin’s mouth, spilling over his tongue. 

Quentin drank it down, bitter as it was. It was a price he was willing to pay, an easy trade. Peter let out a disbelieving noise and went pliant, trembling under Quentin’s hands. He turned eagerly as Quentin guided him onto his belly, wriggling that cute, firm ass of his as Quentin hastily got his cock out and slicked it up with spit. Peter let out a shaky groan as Quentin rubbed himself in the narrow cleft of Peter’s ass, thrusting roughly, digging his fingers into Peter’s hips. “You want more, Pete?” Quentin growled as he thrust. “Want me to stretch you out, fuck you open?” Peter whined and bit down hard on his wrist, trembling. Quentin devoured Peter’s concession for what it was. He tore at the foundations of Peter’s conviction, gouged out what was left of his reserve. He spent himself, panting, over Peter’s back, and buried his laugh against Peter’s shoulders when Peter moaned his name.

#

“I could destroy you,” Peter said, as they lay in bed together.

“Aww, baby, you say the sweetest things.” Quentin stifled a yawn. Months ago, a statement like that would’ve made him instantly wary. Now, he was amused. 

Peter wasn’t. He stared at Quentin, cheek pressed to the grey pillow. Everything about the bedroom was sparse, as was the rest of Peter’s apartment. The kid who’d accumulated Lego and Star Wars toys and handmade tech was long dead. “It’d be some story. ‘The Man Who Makes Millions Extorting Silicon Valley Billionaires’.” 

“Not a great title, but you could work on it,” Quentin said. He walked his fingers down Peter’s arm. Peter grabbed his wrist, bringing his hand up to Peter’s lips. “You’ve got to do better than that if you want that shiny Pulitzer prize.” 

Peter shook his head. He grazed kisses over Quentin’s knuckles, meeting Quentin’s eyes with each kiss. “It’ll be a waste. I need you. You remind me of who I was.” Peter’s hand tightened over Quentin’s wrist, until it hurt, until there’d be a purpling band of bruises around it tomorrow. Quentin made not a sound, grinning, teeth-bared, through the pain. He had marks like that on his ankles, on the back of his neck, his hips and ribs. Each one was a point scored, a point made. Peter let go, twisting around onto his back. “Of what I gave up to be here,” he said softly. 

“Normal people would just use motivational post-it notes or something,” Quentin said, shifting up onto his elbows. He planted a mockingly tender kiss on Peter’s temple and laughed as Peter batted at his chin. 

“I won’t need you forever,” Peter said, though he couldn’t meet Quentin’s gaze. 

“We’ll see,” Quentin promised. He stroked playful circles down Peter’s inner thigh, and smiled as Peter moaned and pressed into his touch.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: @manic_intent  
my writing, process, prompt policy: manic-intent.tumblr.com
> 
> Journalism — great journalism — is even more important nowadays. Here are some of my fave reads: The New Yorker (esp the Ben Taub stuff) and the longform articles aggregator longform.com. I read those every week, not just to try and stay informed but for research and to improve my own writing. I never know what sort of detail might worm its way into my stuff. You can also keep up on what I read via my twitter, but I’m quite spammy. 
> 
> Refs:  
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/jul/02/propublica-investigative-reporting  
https://www.princetonreview.com/careers/85/journalist  
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/05/spider-mans-terrible-journalistic-ethics/361468/  
http://lawandthemultiverse.com/2012/04/19/peter-parker-con-artist/  
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulfletcher/2016/12/26/good-news-for-newspapers-69-of-u-s-population-still-reading/#54959d43723c
> 
> "Amalon", "Publicar" and the issue that Peter was investigating at the start is a reference to Buzzfeed's and ProPublica's investigation of Amazon and delivery deaths. I really rec the read if you haven't. https://features.propublica.org/amazon-delivery-crashes/how-amazon-hooked-america-on-fast-delivery-while-avoiding-responsibility-for-crashes/


End file.
